Chapter 15 #2
The Class One didn’t miss a beat, as if they were both reciting from the same script.
“Of course not. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the way our system is set up.
Since we have to ration medicine, we try alternative treatments first. For instance, we won’t waste antibiotics on a virus, as society did in the past, but we don’t withhold medication. That would be inhumane.”
My right hand folded into a fist.
It reminded me of standing in front of a defendant, knowing they were lying their ass off because I’d seen the damning evidence.
However, a judge had decided to throw out that evidence.
Therefore, I’d had to restrain myself as they pretended they weren’t the piece of shit human responsible for kidnapping and exploiting children.
“And the people who died?” a third person asked.
“They died of the infection that you’re safe from here in Totten,” the Class One answered. “Whoever these people are,” he waved the flyer, “they’re lying to you.”
Emilio gestured to the gathering, which was quickly increasing in size. “Does that clear things up for you?” he asked. “If not, look at it like this: do you think you’d be allowed to do all the nasty shit I’m sure you’re doing with your little soldier, if you were out there in the muck?”
I wasn’t an idealist, nor did I wear rose-colored glasses. Any glasses I might have owned cracked the day I found out that my sister wouldn’t be coming home. The day I understood why, they shattered.
I didn’t go into law expecting daisies and rainbows.
Still, my ethics pointed in a specific direction, and I’d held onto a sort of moral optimism about humankind, despite knowing what we’d done to one another, over and over, throughout history.
Those ethics were the driving force behind my conviction that, ultimately, people would choose people. That they would choose dignity.
I’d believed that all people needed was to see, and that would stir them, rile them up. Once they learned the truth, in my mind, they would come to the same conclusions and want the same things.
But people didn’t need to see.
They needed to experience.
They needed to suffer until their suffering outweighed their ignorance. Yet, for some, even that wouldn’t be enough to remove the blindfold.
It was like LaSalle had said: he’d lived his life entirely dependent upon the existence of an “other.” Nothing changed for him until the moment he learned that he was part of the whole, part of the “us.”
“I’m gonna go,” I said.
Emilio grabbed my hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I pulled out of his hold. “I’m fine. I’m just tired and ready to go home.”
I walked away from the crowd.
Rather than stop at Juniper, I continued past the brick building, needing to put space between myself and the weight of my realizations.
When Raven was abducted, it wasn’t only family and friends who stepped in.
People from different counties in Louisiana all joined the search.
Eventually, so did people from neighboring states.
Volunteers took leave from their jobs to hang flyers and walk through tall grass and mud, their dogs hoping to catch a scent of my sister.
People I’d never met made us meals, changed Wren’s Pull-Ups, and read me bedtime stories in funny voices to attempt to drown out my parents’ wails in the other rooms.
They came together to try to rectify a wrong.
Although the outcome wasn’t what we’d hoped, I’d seen what the collective efforts of good hearts could accomplish. It was primarily what had sparked my interest in law.
But this failure stung more than most.
Rather than tell the women in Sanitation that there would be light at the end of the tunnel, I would have to face that I might have made things worse.
I should have been content with switching schedules and manipulating rations in quiet ways that probably would have never stirred any sort of investigation.
In short, I’d killed them the same way some sadistic bastard had killed my sister—by first gaining their trust.
Dez appeared at my side, wearing only the black T-shirt and matching pants from his uniform. The tie was missing from his hair, and he made no move to touch me, though I could tell he wanted to.
So, I slid my fingers between his.
He squeezed my hand, but he didn’t pull or try to drag me along. Instead, he let me lead, matching my pace, until we arrived at the decommissioned tunnels on the outer edge of the property.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
I held his gaze. “With everything in me.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“You’re welcome, Dez.”
We entered the tunnels.
Despite knowing the path better than I did, he continued to let me lead, using our joined hands to indicate which direction we should head.
We walked until we came to an arched alcove off the beaten path.
In it, he’d created a romantic setup that consisted of a blanket strewn on the ground, flickering candles, a small covered hamper, a couple of pillows, and a bottle of wine.
“Did you know?” I asked, scanning the setup. “Did you know that today would’ve been a complete failure? Was it obvious that I would have fucked up this bad? What if they retaliate against Sanitation? How could I not consider th—”
His lips touched mine.
I soaked up the sensation for a few seconds before pulling away. I didn’t deserve his kiss. I barely felt like I deserved him anymore.
“Give them to me,” he said, brushing his thumb down over the hill of my cheek. “Let me have them. I can handle it.”
“Dez, I’m not gonna cry.”
“Because God forbid you cry when you’re hurting.”
I shot him a look. “What’s crying going to solve?”
“Why does it have to solve anything?”
“No, what I mean is,” I squeezed my eyes shut, popped them open again, “what’s the purpose? Crying won’t change anything right now. Now’s not the time for me to feel sorry for myself. I fucked up. I need to own that.”
“Tapley, this could just be a time for you to feel, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” He angled his head, studying my face. “You won’t give me your tears, but you’ll stab me with your gaze. It’s like…do you even love me?”
I rolled my eyes and took a seat on the blanket.
He took a seat next to me.
For a moment, we sat staring at one another. When I didn’t give him what he was looking for, he reached into the hamper and pulled out a honey-glazed bread roll. For whatever reason, seeing the roll made tears sting the whites of my eyes, but I took a series of deep breaths to push them back.
He broke the bread in half.
Knowing who Dez was and his track record of putting my needs above his, I grabbed the smaller portion. At the end of the day, his body required more calories than mine did.
“Why’d you name your gun Bethany?” I asked.
He leaned back against the wall. “Guess.”
“You named it after your ex.”
“Well, shit.”
I tore off a piece of bread with my teeth and damn near swallowed the piece whole. “It’s an automatic weapon, isn’t it? What, did she come a lot? Like a machine gun? Is that why you gave it her name?”
His brows came together, wrinkling in the middle. “Um, no. Not even close. But even if that was the case, do you think I’d actually say that to you?”
“So why?”
“Because she was chatty.”
“I’m chatty.”
“No, baby. You,” the side of his mouth curved into a tiny grin, “are adorable.”
The stinging in my eyes returned.
I gnawed on more bread.
“You said you loved her.”
“The gun,” he clarified. “I love the gun.”
“Tell me about her. Tell me about Bethany. For starters, what’d she look like?”
“Dark hair,” he answered. “Freckles. She liked big earrings, tight jeans, and Pink Floyd T-shirts. David Gilmour, mostly. Then she had these big hazel eyes that said more than she did, which was a massive feat in and of itself. I met her during my first long-term overseas deployment. She was a civilian contractor. I needed someone, and she was there.”
“She sounds pretty.”
“She was.”
I cleared my throat. “So, why didn’t it work out?”
“She needed more than I could give her,” he said. “Connection. Emotion. She would always say that it was like I was in her presence, but the rest of me was somewhere else. Somewhere far away. I never let her in, and she needed that.”
“Why didn’t you give it to her?”
He shrugged and polished off his piece of bread. “I don’t know. I used to think it was because I couldn’t. And, possibly, that played a role, but I think part of me didn’t feel safe enough.”
“Did you love her?”
“Nah. Love didn’t hit me until I met you.”
I stuffed my face with the rest of my roll.
“Honestly, I like it, but I’m not sure why.
I like the way it hurts. Even now, sitting across from you…
pain. Right here.” He rubbed his knuckles over his sternum.
“It even burns sometimes. And it’s always there.
It makes me want to touch you when I know that’ll make it worse.
It makes me want to make you smile, to keep you safe.
To keep you happy. I only own about thirty percent of my thoughts.
The rest, you’re part of: what’s Larke doing?
Is she okay? Is she thinking about me? Is she thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about her? Stuff like that.”
He retrieved a container from the hamper, opened it, and offered me an elongated miniature cube of what looked like Pecorino Romano cheese.
I dropped a few cubes onto my palm. “I was engaged once.”
Dez rolled one of his shoulders and stretched the muscles in his neck. “Yeah, I know. His name was Travis Brunson. You met him during law school. He was a decent-looking, clean-cut guy who was one year ahead of you.”
“Bethany gets to be pretty, but Travis was decent-looking?”
“I have insecurities.”
“Whatever, Dez.”